Article July 25, 1914 Issue

"My Father's business"

FRED R. RHODES

It would be quite impossible to overestimate the value of a knowledge of Christian Science in dealing with our various commercial problems. After many years spent in battling with the increasing difficulties in business both from within and without, in conformity with material modes of procedure, it has been my ever-increasing joy during the last few years to experience a decrease of worry through the increase of good, and this has come as a natural result of the application of the Christianly scientific understanding of what really constitutes true business.

Webster defines business as "that which engages the time, attention, or labor of any one, as his principal concern or interest, whether for a longer or shorter time;" again, "that which one has to do or should do." Our work, then, is not to be confined to the gaining of the maximum return for the minimum of expense, but to the exchange of our very limited sense of business as merely the successful prosecution of commercial enterprise from a financial point of view, for a higher sense. We are to realize that all true business is not an ultimate but an intermediate experience, not a creating of something but an unfolding of what is already in existence. Since all that God has made is infinitely perfect, the unfolding to our human consciousness can take place only through our endeavor to bring into the lives of those who may be for the moment engaged in this process of unfoldment, a sense of peace, even as our Leader has said of the great Exemplar, Christ Jesus, "Through the magnitude of his human life, he demonstrated the divine Life" (Science and Health, p. 54).

If one analyzes the reason for which he is engaged in business, he is bound to admit that it is with the idea of gaining profit, and profit means "accession of good; ... useful consequences." It is not until we realize that good is an attribute of God, and in consequence cannot be in any way subject to qualification, that we are able to see that unless we make our profit without in any way causing others to suffer, either through overwork or underpay, we are not being about our Father's business. Further, why do we desire to make profit? Is it not really a desire for contentment? Are we not trying indirectly to satisfy, or to prepare for the future? Here, again, our understanding of Christian Science teaches us to depend on God, at all times and under all circumstances, for everything we need to sustain us. It would have seemed an impossibility successfully to introduce our religion into our daily business life, but as one gradually learns in Christian Science to reduce things to thoughts, he is free to follow a natural method of dealing with all circumstances that may arise, and as a never-failing result, he finds the inharmonious conditions becoming less objectified because of this nobler way of working.

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit

"My Father's business"

We'd love to hear from you!

Sign up for unlimited access